New iMac won't find ESX files transferred from old iMac - Help!

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New iMac won't find ESX files transferred from old iMac - Help!

I transferred Logic 8 files from my 2007 iMac running 10.7.5 to my new iMac (2013, running 10.8.2). The EXS audio files cannot be found when Logic is opening the project. I've copied the files via Migration Assistant, directly from a hard drive, and over Dropbox, all to no avail. I still have my old iMac and it finds the files just as well as it always did. Does anyone have a solution?

More info: For example, I open a project. A prompt appears called "Progress" and it states, "Loading Audio Files for "Breaks Remix.exs"..." Then, another prompt appears stating "EXS24 Instrument "Breaks Remix.exs": Audio file "crash #2" not found!" Then it gives me the option to search again or continue. 'Search Again' fails. When I open the project (after the files are not found), the files show up, and I see the MIDI data, but I cannot get the track to assign to play any sound. This is happening for ALL of my projects that have EXS24 instruments.

Posted on Mar 10, 2013 1:11 PM

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Answer 1

Mar 10, 2013 1:41 PM in response to pirateraina

This is such a common issue (I have seen similar posts here and elsewhere, numorous times in the last three months alone..) and is why using MA to move Logic and it's associated files over from another computer is not recommended.

It is better to simply install Logic from scratch...

However, given you are trying to use Logic 8 which isn't supported on ML.. I'm surprised you have got so far in the first place.. without other issues.

Having said all that... The one thing I would recommend is to rebuild your spotlight indexes.... as Logic uses Spotlight to track all the files it needs..

http://osxdaily.com/2012/01/17/rebuild-spotlight-index/

This sometimes works and sometimes does not... so it's worth a shot at least...

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Answer 2

Mar 10, 2013 2:43 PM in response to pirateraina

The problem is possibly that the samples are now on a drive with a different name.

EXS24 instruments contain info including the file paths of the the relevant samples. If the file path is different, then the links fail.

Redmatica used to make a wonderful app called EXSManager which could re-link all the samples, but the company was bought by Apple - maybe Logic 10 will contain this functionality.(Logic used to have Project Manager which did this but it got dropped somewhere along the way.)

As the previous post said, make sure your Spotlight indexes are rebuilt and then try opening the Logic files again. Hopefully you'll search and actually find the sample files. Then you may need to re-save each instrument.

If you know exactly where the samples are, you should be able to opt to search manually. Once you've found one sample, Logic usually finds the rest.

Alternatively, re-name the drive or partition where the samples are stored to be exactly the same as your last iMac - then everything might work again.

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Answer 3

chorleyman

Level 4

1,420 points

Mar 10, 2013 3:44 PM in response to Colin Shapiro

Colin Shapiro wrote:

If you know exactly where the samples are, you should be able to opt to search manually. Once you've found one sample, Logic usually finds the rest.

Alternatively, re-name the drive or partition where the samples are stored to be exactly the same as your last iMac - then everything might work again.

The last bit is actually a very logical solution; if the file path is replicated all should be good - I hadn't really thought about it like that before.

Hopefully, our Redmatica man, Andrea Gozzi is contributing to this kind of development for the next version of Logic - there are optimistic viewpoints, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

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